Medellin Cartel

The Medellin Cartel was a Colombian drug cartel that was founded in 1972 by Pablo Escobar and his cousin Gustavo Gaviria in the city of Medellin. The cartel smuggled contraband such as television sets and jewelry at first, and Escobar became a wealthy person, buying half of the local police force. However, his life was changed in 1979 when Chilean chemist Mateo Moreno introduced the two to Peruvian paste, which could be made into cocaine. The cousins worked with Moreno to smuggle cocaine into Colombia, making $540,000 with every convoy that crossed the border. The Medellin Cartel would become richer by building "the Kitchen" drug factory in Medellin and by making an alliance with the Ochoa Brothers, and the Medellin Cartel made at least $420,000,000 a week at its height. 90% of the cocaine that entered the United States and 80% of cocaine overall was supplied by the Medellin Cartel, but the Search Bloc unit of the Colombian police and the US' Central Intelligence Agency would bring the cartel down by assassinations; Gaviria was killed in 1990, and then Escobar in 1993.